Clouds
by Midoriko-sama
Summary: Winner of SvF BD02 Wedge's picture challenge on his web page.


Clouds

By Midoriko-sama

July 8th 2003

Clouds were boring. So white and mellow and soft and useless.

Good thing you couldn't see them through all these leaves. Yeah, good thing.

They had stopped for the night again. And this time that letch hadn't found a house to 'exorcise'. Good thing too, he wouldn't have slept with them in the house _he_ had chosen. Feh, a whore house. He'd have died of the scents alone in there.

Clouds could become red though, he mused, shifting on his perch on the branch. Like now, they had turned blood red in the sunset, and during the night they would take a deep rusty hue. They were still soft, they were still mellow, but they could change.

He slumped further onto the branch unconsciously, levelling his nose to the wave of her scent.

Yes, mellow alright, and shifting at need.

Like the time with his brother. Little bitch almost killed the great big bastard. Calling him Hanyou too, and disgrace, when his mother was a bloody kitsune. Not that he had anything against the things- he quiet liked the little fluff ball, unless it was when he slept with her.

Soft and mellow and useless, but now they were red.

Or like the time when she had lost it because Naraku was insulting him. She'd thrown an arrow that had near purified him. Damn bitch had put herself in danger because he was being _insulted_, feh, like there was anything new in that.

Naraku had almost been done in. Almost. Would that bastard _ever_ die? No matter how much they hit him, he wouldn't come down. When he wasn't a bloody puppet of course.

Clouds could be fast too, and many layered. Some of them rolled by quickly, and the other more placidly- some like him through the trees, others like a walk after a picnic. He liked those things. A lot to eat and sitting on the grass, something outdoors, like him. And food.

The faster layer was lower- his hahaue had once told him that. And the other one was further away, hidden behind the rushing layer. Even clouds hid themselves. But they were mellow and soft and useless- and now they were red like his claws became with the blood of demons.

Or humans.

He shuddered.

Maybe even he was useless after all, like the clouds. If he couldn't protect her- and he was soft enough to even think about protecting her and not the jewel- then he was mellow and useless alright.

Miroku had gone to spy on them that afternoon at the hot springs. He had been there to try and drag him back, but he'd ended being sat and being called hentai with the others. Not even the brat had said anything in his favour. Not that he hadn't paid for it.

He leaned lowed to hear her as she sang for the same brat to put him to sleep. Hahaue used to do that. He didn't like the squeeze at his insides it produced, so he striated up on the branch again.

But as soon as his nose was out of her scent, his instincts protested and he had to lie back down before they made him jump down to check on her even if she was right there. Soft, like the bloody clouds that were now as red as his claws.

They changed shape too. Strange how many things they seemed to do now that he thought about it.

Some clouds were rash, some were calm, some were rolling and changing shape as he looked, some weren't even moving, hiding behind the ones that were rushing by.

Clouds seemed to describe the life of a man at different moments, or the lives of many man at the same moment. He snickered. No doubt the brat thought him stupid. And probably so did the other two. And probably . . . so did she. But he really wasn't. Rash, yes, and inept at affairs that concerned one or more or any number of humans, but not stupid.

He had been thought strategy as a little boy, by his hahaue, and he knew all the names of the stars, and how to read and write. He hadn't used any of these except the first of course, so it could all be called nearly forgotten, but it was there. How his hahaue had managed to get his restless butt to sit down and learn that was a mystery.

The clouds were restless too, now that he looked closely. They were running, as though attempting to get away from their inevitable change when the last of the sun disappeared and there was nightfall.

Her scent was everywhere around him now. There was no wind, no breeze even, it was warm, and the scent lulling, and it felt like she hugged him as the scent did. 

But even though they were rushed, they were still soft. A bird could fly through them without pain. He flew through them when he went high enough, and they bent at his will, and clung to his robe to spin away like tendrils of harmless smoke.

Like she clung to him sometimes, when he was injured and she was crying on him as he fought with unconsciousness and pain after having finished off their daily assault. Her touch was like a feather's but searching for his injuries in that light stroked frenzy. Rash like the rushing clouds but still as mellow and soft.

Her fingers on his skin

He shivered again. 

It was a feeling he never wanted to remember. It was too happy a thought for him, and he had learned not to harbour those, they were dangerous. Hope was another. Lose all hope, life had thought him. Hope is a creature created to torture, given a double face that looks perfect on one side, and is simply made to let you down, to see it break. To hope is to have hope broken and to be broken in turn.

Like the clouds too there, he mused. The monk was being slapped, and fire was started. Kagome had fed the brat already. He ate more than _he_ did, youkai's sake.

He didn't feel like eating much today. He never really did anymore lately, but if he didn't she would fret and worry, and eating was something he needed to do even if he didn't have the urge for it. It was always better to go along. Shrugging was easier.

Strange, he thought, how the two layers of clouds hid yet another layer that only showed up now. And behind those even, the stars. How many layers to the sky? How many to him? And her?

She had many too, she couldn't hide from him. Like recognised like. She had a happy side, an angry side- Kami knew he knew _that one_ well enough- and her sad side. That one was his fault too, when she wasn't sad because humans had been killed.

Mellow and soft, and they were still red. But they would shift now, become a bright yellow, then a dark blue when the moon rose.

He closed his eyes as he rarely did- it was a great allowance to let down one's guard- and breathed deeply. Now she was calm and happy. Mellow. Soft. Calming and true. But she could hide bitterness at need, could hide pain behind anger and smile alike, could hide worry behind a laugh and calm her little child with a stroke of the hand when she wanted to cry herself.

And he? He could smell her different layers, and she could see through his sometimes, with those eyes that changed colour of hers. They went dull, cold, bright, shining, warm, all. Like the clouds, he thought again, as he opened his eyes to see one swirl around and change colour as different parts of it caught different lights.

Strange how a cloud could be a metaphor of a man's life, he realised. Depending on what light- or life- touched it, they changed colour. And the wind changed their shape, and their speed. But they never lost their matter of clouds, they only lost all the rest.

Depending on what life touched a man, it changed his thoughts, his heart, his mind, but he never stopped being a man. Or a youkai, or a human, or a woman, or a kit. Or a Hanyou. So depending on what he was, and what hit him, he became.

What would he have become if his life had been different? What would he _become_, soon, in the future. The jewel was near complete. What would hit him then? What wind? What light? What life?

Would she take a hanyou? Would she take a human? Would she take a youkai?

Would she take any?

The stars winked between one cloud and another. Tried to show themselves no matter how hard the clouds tried to hide them, whether they were the rushing clouds, or the mellow clouds, or even the thin wispy layer that was the third and barely visible.

Like that light he saw sometimes in her eyes. The light he saw once in his own, when he had been thinking while he bathed and had chanced to look at his reflection in the calm water.

Maybe someday he wouldn't fear the layers, and he wouldn't fear letting the hidden stars show. The skies could map more than a route. They mapped a man's soul, and his rout in life.

She would soon call him now. To eat with the others, to put up one of his gruff layers and let her see through his hair to attempt glimpsing his eyes. What colour would her eyes be tonight? Maybe bright with anger, if she hadn't forgotten the incident at the springs. But she's let him explain tomorrow, or when she felt better and her eyes had a different layer on, and then she'd say sorry. And maybe then he'd hug her. The stars always made their best to peep through. Like they did through the layers of clouds.

Her scent still hugged him as it was joined with the scent of her cooking his food or him. The clouds still raced by up ahead; raced by or slaunched tiredly or danced whisperingly, depending on the layer. And the stars kept peeping.

The clouds wept too, now that he thought of it. How similar to a man. Not so useless after all. And they wept now, fat wet drops coming down.

He joined them on the ground, picked up her and the brat and hid them under his clothes. It didn't matter that he got wet. A jump or two through the trees and he would be dry.

Hide, rush, weep, change, colour, shift, stop, rest, twist, they could do it all, those clouds, just like a man. Just like him. Not useless at all. Maybe neither was he, as he kept them dry, and a bit of the stars kept peeping through even now as the rain came down. Even more now, as he held her and embraced her as her scent had done before.

Maybe clouds weren't so simple- but neither so complicated. Like him. Layers upon layers, but still a man. He never changed his matter of man, or his matter of self. Even when he changed shape on the moonless nights, he still remained himself. Whichever shape he took when the jewel was finished, he's still retain his inner self. Like the clouds, shifting and changing, but remaining clouds. Whatever colour hit him, whatever life hit him, whatever wind, he'd still be himself. Even in his youkai form, he wouldn't kill her, because those stars where still there, peeping through the layers, no matter how the clouds on the outermost side changed their form.

The rain stopped. He let her go and jumped up in the tree again complaining loudly about the ramen, which she busied herself to again at once.

Clouds weren't so useless after all he thought, as he heard the kitsune wail to eat again, and her telling him it was not his food.

Tomorrow he'd sit on a branch and watch the stars. Yes, and remember what hahaue had thought him about them. If the clouds had taught him today, the  stars would teach him tomorrow. Today they peeped like that innermost layer of himself that the clouds had thought him he would never lose. Maybe tomorrow they would teach him to deal with that innermost self he would never lose.

Yes, clouds were not that useless after all. They were a man, a woman, him, her. And they shaped like him as they shaped like her. And maybe she was a cloud like him, and he like her, and he a part of her and she of him

Yes, yes, clouds were not that useless after all, and neither was he.

End

An: My answer to the picture story challenge on SvF_BD02_Wedge's web page. Go check it out on geocities.com/SvF_BD02_Wedge Will be listed there under my other alias. 


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